It’s been a long while — to be exact, since Christmas — since we heard from Berna, our Irish correspondent over in County Kildare. Here she is, walking again at Clongowes, in what’s becoming spring in Ireland, while we in the Northeast U.S. are about to be buried in the white stuff yet again:

Winter Landscape, Elizabeth Colwell

Did a solitary Clongowes walk this morning – my only company were the crows in the large trees that line the main avenue. They have a rather spooky sound, but they are a cheeky lot. When I put out crumbs for the smaller birds they arrive in their black Mafiosi suits and gobble the best bits. The robins and willy-wag-tails have to wait for the tiny crumbs that are left. It’s hard to like crows.

I agree, it’s hard to like crows. But this morning, in the wake of our umpteenth snowstorm, nothing moving except huge white flakes, I’d welcome even them. I’m not a haiku writer, not a poet of any kind, but I am moved to this truncated effort:

6 Responses to From Ireland… and Stockbridge…

Lovely post. I feel nestled in nature with the other creatures which bless our daily lives.
This is the power of the written word, reflections on Ireland and haiku. I felt drawn in and settled by the simplicity. Oh, for more simplicity!

It is hard to like crows. And I really try to value and appreciate and accept living beings generally speaking (I have no problem with spiders, snakes, etc.), but crows – they just irritate me, and some days even piss me off. Crows, and cockroaches. *sigh*

Crows are sky bullies
Running off other small birds
Dark, loud, menacing.

I really like your haiku-type poem, Stef. Makes me think of Van Gogh’s Wheat field with Crows. Granted he was already suicidal, the crows (which certainly were there, if not in such force) certainly embody his violent and self-destructive mood: “Dark, loud, menacing.”